Facilities management security

Ensure your facility is 100% secure: a guide for Professionals

The importance of a robust facility management security strategy

Security is an incredibly important part of facilities management as it provides clear, well-thought-out ways to protect both your employees, clients, and property, intellectual or otherwise, that may be associated with your facility. By protecting your facility and its workers you will actually be able to save money through preventative measures, rather than paying costs associated with amending any thefts, injuries, or damages that may happen.

Security threats to protect against

Depending on the type of facilities management you undertake, the threats you need to protect against will differ. For example, if you manage a hospital or another type of healthcare facility, your priority would be protecting patients and patient information. Conversely, if your facility is a higher education building like a college or university, the biggest security threat would be the theft of intellectual property and the safety of students and staff. Figuring out what type of protection your facility needs is an excellent first step towards devising a facilities management and security strategy.

It’s also important to remember that crime exists in many different forms and it isn’t just a person breaking and entering your facility anymore. Along with the increased use of technology in our daily lives comes the rise of cyber-crime. This type of crime can be particularly hard to monitor and protect against since the people committing cyber-crime are essentially invisible to the naked eye. However, having a proper security strategy can help reduce the risk of cyber-crime exponentially.

Overall, the most common types of security threats to protect your facility against include:

1. Fire
2. Theft of property
3. Theft of information
4. Vandalism
5. Violence

How to build & maintain a watertight security strategy

Building and maintaining an effective security strategy may seem intimidating at first. But, thankfully, Xplor Recreation has compiled this guide to help get you started and to help find services that are perfectly tailored to your facilities management strategies.

Where to start

One of the first things to do when creating a facilities management and security strategy is to assess your facility and decide what level of security it will need. This can be done in a variety of ways, such as looking at the crime rate of the location of the facility, the level of security used by neighbouring facilities, or even analyzing the amount of security breaches that your facility already faces.

Once you have properly assessed your property, you will understand which areas of your facility require the most security and from there you can work to decide what type of technology or plans to have in place in order to prevent security breaches from happening.

Another important part of creating a facilities management and security strategy is having properly trained staff. It is imperative that there are specific employees that are fully briefed on how to handle security breaches. Members of the facility management team can often be trained on the issues at hand but the work needing to be accomplished can also be contracted out to security professionals.

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What you need

As mentioned previously, one of the first and most important things to do when creating a security strategy is to have properly trained staff. These staff members can be outsourced if necessary. If you are planning on outsourcing your security needs many security companies offer consultations as part of their services in order to help you with the development of your security strategy.

Typical services that you should include in your security strategy include:

1. Alarm Response: having a designated person or company to check on your facility after an alarm is triggered will lower the amount of damage a report of the incident to be recorded immediately
2. Incident Logs: it is important to have a log of all incidents, no matter how minor they seem. Incident logs should include time, location, and date of the incident, along with the contact information of the people involved, such as witnesses. The report should also have a description of the incident, any injuries or damages.
3. Parking monitoring: security guards can keep track of all cars entering the facility’s premise and also work to prevent forms of vandalism from happening to any parked vehicles.
4. Guest processing: it is very common of facilities to keep track of any guests that may visit the premise. This can work to deter an incident from happening or
5. Access control: by limiting the access to certain areas of your facility you can lower the risk of a breach occurring
6. Surveillance cameras: video cameras are an excellent way to both prevent and keep a record of any crime that may occur

Additional services that you may want to add to your strategy depending on the type of facility:

1. Exterior patrols: this service would typically be provided through a contracted security company as it requires trained security guards to patrol around the outside of your facility
2. Interior Patrols: depending on the type of facility, you probably won’t require interior patrols due to the use of surveillance cameras. However, interior patrolling can be helpful if your facility has a high level of hazards associated with it, such as a production site.
3. Physical security, fences, gates, etc…: you may find that the best deterrence of security breaches is installing physical barriers around your facility. This type of deterrence is usually best for facilities that pose a danger to trespassers.

Which technology you should consider using

The two most common and recommended technologies to use when starting to create your facilities management and security strategy are a video surveillance system as well as access control and alarm systems.

Video surveillance is fairly common as you can see surveillance cameras being used in almost any facility that you enter. This aspect of security allows you to monitor your facility while also keeping a video record of any incidents that may happen.

While video surveillance systems are typically pretty straight-forward access control systems can vary, meaning there are a lot of different types to choose from. Access control can be as simple as a passcode on doors that only authorized people have access to, or it can be as advanced as fingerprint or retina scanning. The type of access control system that you choose is entirely up to you depending on what is best for your facility.

Another common type of technology used for facility security is motion sensors. These can be as simple as a bell ringing to alert you when somebody enters the facility, which helps to lower the chances of a security breach occurring without your knowledge.

One of the best things about these three technologies is that they are easy to integrate into existing security systems, meaning even if you have already started building your facilities management and security strategy without this technology you can always add it on in the future for even more protection against potential threats.

Recently, some facilities have even started implementing the use of drones in the execution of some of their security strategies. When implemented, drones are typically used to scout especially large locations such as oil and gas facilities or government buildings. However, there are privacy issues to be aware of if you are interested in using drones to patrol facilities that have large amounts of traffic, such as university campuses. In the near future, you can expect to see drones being used much more consistently for facility security purposes.

Who needs to be involved

Facilities management strategies require a lot of collaboration and communication between departments, some of the key members to include in your security strategy would be facility managers, any existing or contracted security personnel, executives or department leaders, as well as individuals your IT department, if applicable.

Having a wide variety of departments represented in your security team makes it easy to communicate and discuss possible security breaches in order to formulate a solid security strategy, as well as discussing any breaches that have already happened in order to help decide to how to make your security strategy the best that it possibly can be.

As previously mentioned, many security companies provide consults on facilities management and security strategy. Even if you choose not to contract any of the work to companies it is recommended that you have a consultation done to help come up with a strategy that is proven to be affective for your type of facility.

It is important to ensure that anybody that is to be trained or hired to carry out these roles and services are well trained in security and any specific procedures that your facility has enacted in order to provide quality security services as well as prevent any damage from occurring on the property.

How to keep your security strategy up-to-date

It is recommended that you review your management and security strategy at least once a year, or after any major incidents. Frequent updating of your strategy will help ensure that your facility remains safe and secure for the years to come.

Not only should you continually update your security strategy, but you should also make sure that the software and other technology that you use is also up-to-date. For example, if you use a firewall to protect valuable information the expiration of that software can open doors for hackers to access your facilities’ private information. If this occurs it can result a leak or even the selling of personal information to third parties, which is one of the last things you want happening to your facility and its clients.

Streamline your facility management & ensure security with Xplor Recreation

Are you ready to begin your facilities management journey? Contact Xplor Recreation to help you get started. We specialize in member management, facilities management, and team management for businesses and organizations of all sizes!